November 8, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



463 



The stations situated west of the Mississippi have, as a 

 r-ule, fallen into the general policy of vi^ork indicated above, 

 from stress of circumstances — that is, in consequence of the 

 imperative demands made upon them by the farming 

 population. Then it has sometimes happened that those 

 trained only in the ideas of Europe and of our Atlantic 

 coast, not appreciating the limitations imposed upon them 

 by the differences of climate and soil, have mistakenly 

 sought to substitute the practices of the old countries to the 

 more laborious investigation of the new field before them ; 

 and, missing the mark, they have drawn upon the station 

 the condemnation of "practical men." 



Such mistakes can hardly be surprising when we consider 

 the history and conditions of the establishment of the sta- 

 tions ; and this is the answer I have made to European 

 workers who animadverted upon the small amount of grain 

 in the vast volume of our station literature. " Suppose that 

 thirty-five or forty stations were to-day established in Ger- 

 many, do you think you could officer them all with expe- 

 rienced men?" The answer invariably has been, "As- 

 suredly not" ; generally with the additional remark that it 

 is hard enough to get well-qualified men for all the stations 

 now existing. If such is the fact in Germany, there is no 

 reason for humiliation if we have not been able to officer 

 all our new stations with men of broad education, and pos- 

 sessing the varied scientific and technical qualification re- 

 quired for this work. I think we may consider that we 

 have done well under these conditions ; and, no doubt, 

 much of the "padding" objected to in our station reports 

 would not have been printed but for the legal requirement 

 that bulletins shall be issued at least once every three 

 months. While this provision is in some respects a salu- 

 tary one, yet, in view of the necessary long duration of 

 most valid experiments in agriculture, it almost necessarily 

 results in the publication of a good deal of matter which 

 might as well not have seen the light at all, or, at least, 

 until it should have been better digested. 



There is one point that should be most jealously guarded 

 by our stations and all those interested in the progress of 

 agriculture — namely, the occasional attempts at inter- 

 ference in the staff appointments by political or local 

 influences having no relation whatever to the legitimate 

 work before them. Nothing can be more fatal to the suc- 

 cess of that work, and nothing but stout and determined 

 resistance to all such interference, based upon "pulls," the 

 spoils system, or any other consideration than that of fit- 

 ness, should meet such attempts on the part of station-men. 



There can be no doubt, also, that, in order to meet the 

 large demand for properly qualified men at our stations, 

 more of special, but still broad, training for such work is 

 needed on the part of our young men ; for, since agricul- 

 tural science involves the application of almost every 

 branch of natural science, from the fundamental mathe- 

 matical physics to the uttermost confines of biology, the 

 mere specialist in physics or in biology is of but very lim- 

 ited usefulness in station-work. The very broadness of 

 view required in it constitutes one of its chief attractions. 



University of California. E. W. Hilgard. 



The Queen's Cottage, Kew. 



THE Queen's Cottage at Kew stands in the centre of 

 some forty acres of enclosed land, which is thickly 

 planted with trees and fi'om which the public are excluded. 

 It stands on the south-west side of the Royal Gardens, be- 

 tween them and the Old Deer Park, Richmond, also royal 

 property. Portions of the cottage-grounds have evidently 

 been tastefully laid out many years ago and planted with 

 choice shrubs and trees by some competent landscape- 

 gardener. Even now, although the trees and shrubs were 

 until recently left entirely to themselves, the grounds 

 are full of pretty effects and delightful glimpses such as 

 please the artist and lover of nature. The wilder part is 

 crowded with Beech, Chestnut, Oak, Lime and other trees 

 which, in places, rise straight out of a turf formed entirely 



of Bluebells, a glorious picture in the spring-time, while 

 other parts show, in tangled profusion, masses of Black- 

 berry bushes, Brake and other Ferns, Daffodils, Ragged 

 Robin and other dwellers in English woods. A writer in 

 the Daily News, a few years ago, described these grounds 

 as "forty acres of waste land at the present tiine given up 

 entirely to solitude and rabbits. There is nothing in it but 

 thickets of trees and the Queen's Cottage, into which no one 

 ever goes." 



Mr. Scheer, an amateur botanist, specially interested in 

 Cacti, and who resided at Kew, wrote an excellent account 

 of Kew in 1840, entitled " Kew and its Gardens," in which 

 he speaks of the cottage and grounds as "an enclosed villa 

 hid from the common gaze, which is, we believe, the keep- 

 er's residence, where all the original drawings of Hogarth 

 are preserved." The public have no difficulty in seeing the 

 cottage now, as vistas have been cut through the wood 

 surrounding it, so that the cottage can be seen from the 

 gardens ; it also is made to combine picturesquely with 

 the surroundings. The cottage itself is a thatch-roofed, 

 gabled building, evidently built only as a kind of shelter or 

 retiring-place, and never intended as a residence. Its front 

 windows overlook a lawn surrounded by a belt of trees, 

 with beds of Rhododendrons in the middle. These Rho- 

 dodendrons are now enormous masses, all R. ponticum, 

 and the theory is that they were originally the stocks on 

 which good varieties had been grafted, but the scions have 

 long ago perished. The birds, including the nightingale, 

 rabbits, squirrels, beautiful trees and plants of all kinds, all 

 in an unkempt, semi-wild state, with this picturesque old 

 cottage set in the midst of the quiet, make a delightful re- 

 treat which the public would, no doubt, enjoy, but cer- 

 tainly would destroy if admitted freely. Kew is large 

 enough, even for the enormous crowds that visit it, andthe 

 cottage and grounds may well be left to "solitude and the 

 rabbits." 



I am unable to find when the cottage was built or the 

 use it was originally put to. It is, however, supposed to 

 have been built for Queen Caroline, wife of George III., 

 " who resided at Kew during at least three months in every 

 year, and made besides a stay of three days in every fort- 

 night at this, his favorite spot." The queen, it appears, 

 was an ardent gardener. "One of the queen's delights," 

 according to Walpole, "was the improvement of her gar- 

 den, and the king believed she paid for all with her own 

 money; nor would he ever look at her intended plans, say- 

 ing 'he did not care how she flung away her own rev- 

 enue.' When she died she was in debt to the king to the 

 amount of /"zo.ooo." „, „, 



London. ^ W. WalSOtl. 



The Generic Name of the Silver-bell Trees. 



IN a note published in the issue of this journal of October 

 1 8th, 1893 (pp. 433, 434), I called attention to the fact 

 that the generic name Halesia, Ellis, was antedated by 

 Halesia, P. Br., and should therefore be rejected. I pro- 

 posed that it should be replaced by Mohria, in honor of 

 Dr. Charles Mohr. My attention has since been called to 

 the long previous publication of a genus Mohria (Swartz, 

 S_yn. Fii, 159, 1806), a South African genus of Ferns, dedi- 

 cated to D. M. H. Mohr, a distinguished cryptogamist, who 

 died in 1 808. Thus, in attempting to correct one homonym, 

 I have inadvertently published another. This is unfortu- 

 nate, but can easily be corrected. I here suggest for 

 Halesia, Ellis, the generic name i\Iohrodendron=Slohria, 

 Britton (G.arden and Forest, vol. vi., p. 434), not Swartz, and 

 for the species : 



1. Mohrodendron Carolinum (L )=Halesia Carolina, L. 

 = Halesia tetraptera, L. 



2. Mohrodendron dipterum (L. ')=Halesia diptera, L. 



3. Mohrodendron parviflorum (Michx. )=Halesia parvi- 

 flora, Michx. a- r 73 ■ 



Coliimljia ColleRe, New York. ^- -t- Bllllon. 



